School calls family to complain that dead son skips class

A tragic reminder: Jean Fritz-Pierre would have started school by now. (Photo via Facebook)

Jonas Pierre of Brooklyn, N.Y., was forced to relive a horrible moment when his son’s school started calling to ask about the youth’s terrible attendance record.

The thoughtless calls picked at a fresh wound. Jean Fritz Pierre, 16, had drowned last June on a school field trip to Bear Mountain State Park, where he’d gone swimmiing with a buddy in Hessian Lake, also called “Bloody Lake.”

“We have a million, one hundred thousands kids, or something like that,” he said, according to Gawker. “I’m sure there are errors in the bureaucracy.”

Pierre, a 39-year-old retail worker who shared a small flat with his only son, filed notice of a claim for two $5 million lawsuits against the city for his son’s death, seeking damages from the city and Department of Education for “negligence, including breach of their duty to adequately supervise students in their care” and “permitting a ninth-grade student to swim, unsupervised, in a lake known to have a dangerous undertow,” the claim says. He said he was outraged when a report came out that cleared the DOE of negligence in the drowning.

“How is it not their fault?” Pierre said to DNAinfo New York. “Where’s the teacher that was supposed to take care of the kids? The teacher didn’t take responsibility — he went to play like a teenager, that’s why my kid came back dead.”